, is a

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

temple belonging to the

Shingon is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asian Buddhism. It is a form of Japanese Esoteric Buddhism and is sometimes called "Tōmitsu" (東密 lit. "Esoteric uddhismof Tō- ...

school of

Japanese Buddhism Buddhism was first established in Japan in the 6th century CE. Most of the Japanese Buddhists belong to new schools of Buddhism which were established in the Kamakura period (1185－1333). During the Edo period (1603–1868), Buddhism was cont ...

, located in the city of

Minami-Alps, Yamanashi is a Cities of Japan, city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. , the city has an estimated population of 71,618 in 27,956 households, and a population density of 270 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Minami-Alps is Yamanash ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. Its main image is a statue of

Amida Nyōrai Amida can mean : Places and jurisdictions * Amida (Mesopotamia), now Diyarbakır, an ancient city in Asian Turkey; it is (nominal) seat of: ** The Chaldean Catholic Archeparchy of Amida ** The Latin titular Metropolitan see of Amida of the Ro ...

History

A temple named Eizen-ji founded in 802 AD in what is now part of the city of

Hokuto, Yamanashi is a city located in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 45,684 in 22,091 households, and a population density of . The total area of the city is . Geography Hokuto is located in far northwest Yamanashi Pref ...

, but was relocated and re-founded by

Kūkai , born posthumously called , was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the Vajrayana, esoteric Shingon Buddhism, Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) und ...

in 822 AD. During the

Heian period The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kammu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means in Japanese. It is a ...

, the area came under the control of Kagami Tomomitsu (1143 - 1230), a local warlord and progenitor of the

Takeda clan The was a Japanese samurai clan active from the late Heian period until the late 16th century. The clan was historically based in Kai Province in present-day Yamanashi Prefecture. The clan reached its greatest influence under the rule of Taked ...

and became the Buddhist ''bettō'' temple controlling the nearby

Shinto shrine A Stuart D. B. Picken, 1994. p. xxiii is a structure whose main purpose is to house ("enshrine") one or more kami, , the deities of the Shinto religion. The Also called the . is where a shrine's patron is or are enshrined.Iwanami Japanese dic ...

of Takeda Hachiman-gu (in what is now

Nirasaki, Yamanashi is a city in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 28,150 in 12831 households, and a population density of 210 persons per km². The total area is . Geography Nirasaki is located in the northwestern end of the K ...

), the tutelary shrine of the spirits of the Takeda clan. The temple was relocated in 1208 to its present location. The temple continued to be sponsored by the Takeda clan through the

Sengoku period The was the period in History of Japan, Japanese history in which civil wars and social upheavals took place almost continuously in the 15th and 16th centuries. The Kyōtoku incident (1454), Ōnin War (1467), or (1493) are generally chosen as th ...

, and was later protected by

Toyotomi Hideyoshi , otherwise known as and , was a Japanese samurai and ''daimyō'' (feudal lord) of the late Sengoku period, Sengoku and Azuchi-Momoyama periods and regarded as the second "Great Unifier" of Japan.Richard Holmes, The World Atlas of Warfare: ...

and

Tokugawa Ieyasu Tokugawa Ieyasu (born Matsudaira Takechiyo; 31 January 1543 – 1 June 1616) was the founder and first ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan, which ruled from 1603 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. He was the third of the three "Gr ...

after the fall of the Takeda clan. In the

Edo period The , also known as the , is the period between 1600 or 1603 and 1868 in the history of Japan, when the country was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and some 300 regional ''daimyo'', or feudal lords. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengok ...

Shogun , officially , was the title of the military aristocracy, rulers of Japan during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 1868. Nominally appointed by the Emperor of Japan, Emperor, shoguns were usually the de facto rulers of the country, exc ...

Tokugawa Iemitsu was the third ''shōgun'' of the Tokugawa shogunate, Tokugawa dynasty. He was the eldest son of Tokugawa Hidetada with Oeyo, and the grandson of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Lady Kasuga was his wet nurse, who acted as his political adviser and was at the ...

confirmed the temple's landholdings, which included nine subsidiary temples and 20 chapels in 1642. However, the temple burned down in 1781 and never regained its former prosperity. During World War II the entire region along with the temple was destroyed in a bombing raid with just one statue of Fudo Myo-o, The Buddhist Spirit of Disciple and Firm Moral survived. The statue has now become the main attraction of the temple.

Cultural properties

Important cultural properties

Hōzen-ji Hannyakyō Sutra

Hōzen-ji has a copy of the from the

Kamakura period The is a period of History of Japan, Japanese history that marks the governance by the Kamakura shogunate, officially established in 1192 in Kamakura, Kanagawa, Kamakura by the first ''shōgun'' Minamoto no Yoritomo after the conclusion of the G ...

in black ink on yellow paper consisting of 561 volumes of the 600 volume sutra, with each volume containing 32-35 pages with a height of 26.0 cm and width of 13.0 cm. Every ten volumes is housed in a small lacquer box, which is further housed in one of six larger boxes. The copy is dated 1254 and was a donation by Ichijō Nobunaga, a son of

Takeda Nobumitsu The was a Japanese samurai clan active from the late Heian period until the late 16th century. The clan was historically based in Kai Province in present-day Yamanashi Prefecture. The clan reached its greatest influence under the rule of Taked ...

to the Takeda Hachiman-gu. The sutra was transferred to Hōzen-ji on the separation of Shinto from Buddhism in the early

Meiji period The was an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868, to July 30, 1912. The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonizatio ...

. It was designated an Important Cultural Property of Japan on April 5, 1905

Gallery

Image:Hozenji1.jpeg, West Entrance Image:Hozenji 02.jpeg, Devil Head Tile Image:Hozenji_03.jpeg, Pond Image:Hozenji_04.jpeg, Another view of the pond Image:Hozenji_05.jpeg, Modern temple building Image:Hozenji6.jpeg, Shinto Shrine on temple grounds

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hozen-Ji Buddhist temples in Yamanashi Prefecture Kōyasan Shingon temples Minami-Alps, Yamanashi Kai Province Important Cultural Properties of Japan Bettoji Temples